The Better Lie
by Nancy T
Summary: One-shot tag to "In the Beginning."  John revives to find Samuel dead with a bloody wound and Mary frantic about her mother.  How will she explain it to him?  How can she explain it to anyone?


_The television show "Supernatural" is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc._

_Author's note: Grateful thanks to Officer Clyde and Executive Officer Weaver of the Overland Park, Kansas Police Department. Anything the police do in this story that is right is thanks to them; anything the police do in the story that's wrong is my screw-up._

_And a huge thank-you to my mother, who, when I realized I had to re-write the entire last half of this story, dipped into her vast mental trove of murder-mystery lore and figured out how I could do it._

**May 2, 1973**

"They're all dead," the demon possessing her father told Mary Campbell. "Yep. 'Fraid so. You're Little Orphan Mary now."

She knew that John Winchester, who twenty seconds before had been proposing to her, was dead; he was lying in her arms, unbreathing, his head dangling at a crazy angle where the demon had broken his neck. She knew her father was dead; the demon had shown her the bloody wound that meant her father would be a corpse as soon as the demon stopped animating him. And her mother –

She was shouting threats at the demon, pointless but she had to. And the demon kept grinning and talking and everything was just a roar in her ears until the demon said, "I'll arrange to have Loverboy here brought back breathing."

She froze.

No deals with demons. Ever. Everyone should know that. Especially a demon hunter. The only possible response was "Go to Hell."

But she heard herself saying, "My parents too."

He refused and starting talking about the life she could have with John, away from hunting. How did he know that she hated hunting? Had she brought this on her father somehow?

Then she realized that maybe 50 years with the man she loved was a poor exchange for her soul being tortured in Hell for maybe eternity.

"Oh, no, you can keep your soul," the demon said. "I just need permission."

"For what?"

"Mm – ten years, I need to swing by your house for a little somethin', that's all."

"For what?" she snarled.

"Relax." The creature who'd destroyed her life was chiding her. "As long as I'm not interrupted, nobody gets hurt. I promise. Or you can spend the rest of your life desperate and alone."

He said some more, but his yellow eyes were glittering; he knew he had her. She whispered "Yes," steeled herself, and lifted her face for the ceremonial kiss that sealed the deal. The creature grabbed her shoulder and pulled her forward.

She was kissing her father's lips. She was kissing a demon. Her stomach roiled and she pushed her hand against his arm and then headlights rolled over both of them. The hunter named Dean leaped out of the car yelling "No!" and waving a gun – stupid, you can't exorcise a demon with a gun – and the demon roared out of her father's mouth like a tornado of black smoke and her father dropped back lifeless.

Dean had seen the kiss. He'd seen a demon hunter making a deal with a demon. For a moment she thought the gun was for her, and wished it was. But the other hunter just stared at her with – not even horror, just sorrow.

Then John gasped and started, his neck perfectly straight. "Mary?"

_Worth it._ The thought leaped fiercely into her mind, and she glanced back at Dean as though he could see the thought. But the hunter must have got back into his car; she could see the headlights but not him.

She seized John and hugged him, but that was all she could spare for him. She spun on her knees and lunged toward her father's body. She almost knocked over John, who leaned his arm on the ground, still disoriented. She pressed her hand against Samuel Campbell's wound, maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked, but the blood was sticky and drying, no heartbeat pulsing out fresh liquid blood.

Then John, who had seen more than his share of death in Vietnam, was crouching on the other side of Samuel, staring into his vacant eyes by the light of the street lamp overhead, pressing a firm thumb on the body's wrist. "He's gone."

Mary covered her face with her hands, but couldn't somehow make a sound, feeling her father's blood on her face.

"Mary, what the hell happened?" John asked.

She couldn't answer, couldn't think, blocking it all out for a moment. If she didn't lower her hands she didn't have to see.

"Mary, did – " John's voice throttled, cleared. "Mary, did I do this?"

That brought her hands down. "Oh, God, no. Of course not."

"Then what happened?"

A fresh spurt of panic. "Oh, God. He said he killed Mom too."

"Who?"

She sprang to her feet. "We have to get back – my house – We have to get back – "

John asked no further questions. He lifted Samuel's corpse and, as quickly as possible, laid him in the back seat of the Impala. Mary got in back, cradled her father's head in her lap, while John jumped into the driver's seat and brought the Impala to roaring life.

(Only a few days later did she realize that John hadn't had to pass Dean's car on the narrow road. Dean had seen the straits they were in, and just disappeared. _You really can't trust other hunters_, she thought, _I've got to tell Dad he's right_, before she remembered again.)

Only once on that nightmare trip did John glance into the rear-view mirror at Mary and say, "What happened?" again. Her voice choked with tears, she said, "Please drive, please just drive," and John's focus went entirely to the road and their route.

She had to accept the fact that her mother was dead. Mary closed her eyes, clasping her father's familiar arm, biting her lips. A demon who has possessed a human being is inhumanly strong, and if he's determined to kill someone he'll do it. And this demon had possessed her father. Her mother would never have known how close the danger was, would never have had a chance. But she couldn't help it, couldn't stop thinking that she'd run in and find her mother, battered and bleeding but alive, and her mother would say "I knew you'd come." She had to keep thinking it.

Even from the street she could see that the door to the house was slightly ajar. She was out of the car before John had even turned off the engine. With a reach of his long arm, John locked all three other car doors and then locked the driver's side door as he left.

When he got to the front hallway he looked left and saw Mary standing between the kitchen and dining room, perfectly still.

Deana Campbell lay still with staring eyes, her hand outstretched as though she'd been reaching for something, and her head at the same bizarre angle that John's broken neck had given his head earlier.

Mary fell to her knees beside Deana, picked up her hand. Black sand was filling her head and someone was saying, "Please, please no, please no – "

John looked into Deana's eyes and checked her pulse as he had before, but she'd been inanimate longer than Samuel and it was clear. "Oh, God, Mary. I'm so sorry."

Mary began rocking back and forth, unable to take her eyes off her mother, and began a soft keening wail. John stood, his eyes wide, his breath fast, a trickle of sweat down the side of his face. He checked the kitchen door to be sure it was locked, then slammed open every cabinet and broom closet in the room large enough to hold a person.

He caressed Mary's hair as he passed her. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

He strode into the front room and grabbed a fireplace poker with a sharp point and a good heavy weight – must've been solid iron. He searched the first floor thoroughly, striking the poker under furniture and stabbing it into closets. When he got to the basement door he peered down a steep staircase into utter blackness, shook his head, took several seconds to block the door with a heavy chair and a floor lamp that would crash loudly if knocked over, then ran up the stairs to finish his search.

Mary hadn't even noticed when he left. She heard him when he came back, but she couldn't stop the words that were spilling from her. "I told you, over and over, I begged you to stop. I begged you both and you wouldn't listen, and I knew this would happen! I knew it!"

John crouched behind her, put his arms around her. She leaned back against him, solid and warm, and choked off what she was saying. The cool hunter's part of her brain kicked in: Crush the emotion, grieve later, think fast now. What's next? Never mind what you planned, or wanted. What does the present situation require?

"In God's name, Mary," John whispered, "what were they doing? What happened to them?"

"They – it was – I just can't talk about it now." Both an evasion and the flat truth.

After a moment John said, "OK, let's get you out of – here," and began trying to pull Mary to her feet. "You go to the living room, I'll call the police."

She was on her feet in a flash. "No police! Not yet!"

"What? Why not?"

_Because I don't have a story yet._ "Because, because I don't – "

And the story came, perfectly suited, the details harmonizing with what had actually happened, the only problem being that she had to paint her father as a murdering maniac.

She dropped her head and her mother's dead eyes stared up at her.

_Mommy, Daddy, I'm so sorry. But you know it's what you'd do too. It's what you trained me to do._

"I'm so ashamed," she said quietly. "I never told you, I never told anyone how bad Dad's been getting. Something about keeping the family together. You know how he hated our dating, he kept saying that if I got married it would destroy the family. Mom would try to stand up for me, but he was just as bad – just as bad about her. If she went to the grocery store he'd grill her about where did she really go. Tonight – tonight we had a huge fight. You remember I came out and asked you to take me away? I never thought, I never thought – "

John obviously thought he was speaking, but his voice came out in a whisper. "Your father broke your mother's neck?"

The horrible thing, Mary knew it even as she nodded, was that this wouldn't be hard to sell. Samuel Campbell had probably never been gregarious, but his work as a hunter had made him deeply secretive. Around other hunters, especially with a beer, he could sometimes be the life of the party; but around what he called civilians he was anything from businesslike to dour, and of course they'd never know how many times he'd risked maiming or death to save them from monsters. Almost no one other than hunters socialized with the Campbells, had been around them as a couple or as a family. Hearing that Samuel Campbell had killed his wife and himself, people would shake their heads and say he was quiet and kept to himself. No one would say, "I don't believe he was capable of that." Well, Mary's brother, who had escaped the hunter's life at his first chance, and other hunters would say that; but they'd know better than to contradict the official story.

"Oh, God," she murmured. "I have to tell my brother."

The impact hit her again and she felt her knees buckling. John supported her, pulled her into the dining room and sat her down in a chair. One of the chairs was rather oddly placed over with its back to the bookcase; he grabbed that and sat next to her.

"Mary, what happened? By the river?"

"What – how much do you remember?"

"Not much. Your dad came out of nowhere, yelling at us, pulled you out of the car and decked me. I've taken some punches, but I've never had one knock me cold before."

"Oh. There's not much after that. He – he told me that I had to make a choice between you and the family. And I told him I chose you. And he pulled a knife out of his belt and stabbed himself. And said, 'You're Little Orphan Mary now.' And – that's all."

John shook his head. "I'm so sorry, Mary. If I'd been conscious – "

"No human being could have stopped what happened tonight."

"Are you ready to call the police now?"

She nodded, her head bent.

Then she felt all of the air go out of her as her stomach and diaphragm clenched. Thanks to hunter training, she didn't make a sound, but for a moment she lost track of everything except the sight of a knife lying under the dining room table, its blade darkened even deeper than the shadow of the tabletop.

_The story is that he stabbed himself by the river. Could I say that he just showed up at the river bloody? I told John he had a knife there. Not that John would turn me over the police as a liar. But the blood –_

"Do you want me to call them?"

_the amount of blood, no one would ever believe he'd driven around until he found me and John, and then hit John so hard he knocked him out, with that wound. The knife has to be where he died._

"Mary?"

Look at him, don't draw his attention to the floor. "I'm sorry. I'm just – I'm kind of – "

John came over to her, pulled her up and put his arms around her, and whether it was right for the story at this point or not, she felt herself dissolving into tears. "How could he? How could he? He just gave Mom a bunch of flowers two days ago. They're still upstairs. And then two days later – How does that happen? How could he?"

John shook his head, holding her tight, his hand moving gently on her back.

"Could you call them? The police?" Mary asked. "I have to lie down."

"That's a good idea. Yes, I'll call. You just – I'll be with you as soon as I'm through."

She watched him as he walked into the kitchen, where the telephone was. Passing her mother's body, he did not, as most people would have, avert his eyes and try to pretend it wasn't there; he gazed at Deana with compassion, and made sure that his footsteps didn't accidentally disturb the body or anything around it.

_God, he'd make a good hunter._

The thought leaped in, shocking her so much that for two seconds she forgot everything else.

_He'd hate it. And I'd never wish that on him. Where did that thought come from?_

John went to the wall of the kitchen where the telephone was, and for a moment they were out of each other's line of sight. In that moment she bent and grabbed the knife. She couldn't see any blood on the carpet, but, given the circumstances of Samuel's stabbing, that wasn't surprising. The most outward signs of serious human injury – ruptured eyeball, blood spurt, emptied bladder – were often suppressed if a demon was possessing the person.

Mary walked quickly to the staircase and ran up the stairs as fast as she could without making a sound.

OK, she was going to forgive herself for that thought. Just factually speaking, John would make a good hunter. The fact that it had crossed her mind didn't mean she was wishing it on him. She hated the hunting life, but that didn't mean she'd wished this on her family.

She was hiding the bloody knife in the bunch of lilacs from the vase in her parents' room. Always good to back up a lie with details that are true. The Campbells' wedding anniversary had been a couple of days before, and for once in his unsentimental life Samuel had remembered it. Her mother had been so touched. She wouldn't think about that. But she couldn't help wondering if some angel had whispered to Samuel's subconscious that he wouldn't have time to do a make-good this year.

When she came back down the stairs, John was leaning against a counter, telephone at his ear, his eyes closed. "No. The one in the kitchen, Mary's mother, hasn't been disturbed. Yes. We have her father's body – "

Poor man. And now she was about to make things harder for him. She slipped out the front door, ran to the side of the house where her mother's car was parked.

"Thanks," John said. "Yeah. Yes, I'm hearing the sirens now. I'll go get Mary, we'll be out front."

He hung up the phone. He looked over at Deana's corpse with an expression of incredulity, closed his eyes again.

Then he opened them and moved, going to the living room. "Mary?"

He glanced around the first floor, ran up the stairs. The sirens were very close. He looked into Mary's room and that odd guest room with the two padlocked cabinets. She wasn't in her parents' room either, he could tell at a glance – then he turned in the doorway and looked back in.

There was a vase in front of the mirror on one of the chests of drawers. It was carefully placed on a towel whose color harmonized with it, and there was water in it. But there were no flowers – just a couple of purple petals and a few drops of water on the carpet.

John pelted down the stairs as the sirens stopped, and started out the front door so fast that one of the police officers coming up the walk moved a hand to his gun.

"She's gone," John said.

"What's your name, sir? Who's gone?"

"I'm John Winchester. Mary's gone. Mary Campbell, the daughter." John's gaze swept the street as he spoke. Two black-and-whites, the revolving lights on top of each flashing, were out front. One of the other officers was looking through the window of the Impala at Samuel Campbell's body; the other was headed back to one of the police cars. The two who'd come up the front walk were watching him guardedly. "I'm the one who called this in."

"Is that the father's body in the car, Mr. Winchester?"

"Yes. Her mother's inside here. But Mary's gone, and I'm afraid – "

"Is that your car?"

John suppressed sharpness. "Yes. Mary was frantic to get back here, and we didn't want to leave – "

"We're going to need the keys."

"Oh! Yes. Here." John fished them out of his pocket.

"The mother's body is inside?"

"Yes. I'll show you – "

The officer's hand clamped on his arm. "Just tell us."

John did so, a sudden chill in his stomach. It turned into a solid lump of ice when the second officer came out of the house, nodded his head, and the first officer produced a pair of handcuffs and asked John to put his hands behind his back. John wanted nothing more than to snarl that this was unnecessary bullshit, but he'd been a Marine and knew there are some authorities you just don't fight with. By now there were neighbors out standing on their lawns and porches, and all of them watched him being taken in handcuffs down the Campbells' front walk and put in the back of a police car as a third car rolled up.

The first officer got a clipboard from somewhere in the front seat and turned to face John. "We'll search the house before we issue an APB for Miss Campbell," he said. His tone was oddly (under the circumstances) sympathetic. "You'd be surprised how often people think someone's gone when they're not. But if she is gone, can you tell us what car she might be in?"

"She doesn't have one. Oh, her mother does. A brown 1970 Suburban station wagon. If that's not here, that's what Mary took. Her father's truck is down by the river."

"And we're going to need to secure that scene. I'm going to need your statement about what happened tonight, but first, can you tell me exactly where Mr. Campbell died?"

_Dammit, Mary,_ John thought. _Where are you?_

_S S S S S_

The police car with its intense searchlight slowed almost to a crawl as it approached, then pulled up beside, Samuel's truck, and the searchlight touched first the deep purple lilacs in the middle of the road, then glinted off the knife handle, then revealed Mary sitting to one side like a small child, her legs sprawled out in front of her.

The car stopped. Mary looked up, squinting into the searchlight. The driver got out and came a few steps toward her; the other officer got out but stayed near the car, looking all around.

"Mary?" said the closer officer.

She nodded.

The officer continued moving toward her. "Are you Mary Campbell?"

She cleared her throat. "Yes."

The other officer got back into the car and she could faintly hear him talking on the police radio.

The first officer crouched down beside her. "Are you injured, Mary?"

She shook her head, then tried for words. "I'm just – I feel kind of numb."

The officer beside her nodded.

"I keep thinking, I keep thinking if I'm here and I look at it I'll be able to think of something. Some way I could stop it."

The other officer got out of the car and began stringing yellow crime scene tape from tree to tree along the other side of the narrow road. The officer with Mary glanced up at him, then back to her. "Can you stand up for me, Mary?"

He helped her to her feet, but when he tried to lead her away from the flowers and knife she balked. "He just gave those to her day before yesterday. He didn't hate her, he didn't. He didn't." Tears were running down her face.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

_All right, now I need to focus._ Serious questions hadn't even started yet, and Mary was exhausted. She was playing someone who could communicate through a traumatized numbness, and she desperately wanted to slip into that numbness, and it would have been so easy. But she needed to stay alert, get the story out correctly, remember later on what she'd said here. In a life filled with fighting, deception, and high risk, this was the hardest thing she'd ever done.

"We were over there," she pointed. "John was proposing." She shut her eyes, swallowed. "We didn't even hear Daddy's car. He was, it was just like he was all of a sudden there and yelling. He opened the door and pulled me out, and John came around and he hit him so hard – "

"John hit your father?"

"No. Daddy, Dad, hit John. And John just – dropped. Just like he didn't have any bones. And I was screaming at Dad, and he told me I had to make a choice." She choked; she hadn't even realized she was crying again. "Make a choice between John and our family. And I was so angry, I was so – he's been getting so bad lately with this whole – family thing." A sob tore out of her throat, and the officer caught hold of her forearms as if he were afraid she'd fall. "And I told him, I choose John! I'm sick of you! I choose John! And he said, fine, you won't have to be bothered with your, with your real family anymore. He took, he had this knife, and I thought he was going to stab me and I ran over to wake up John, and he said 'You're Little Orphan Mary now.' And he stuck – he stuck it – "

The officer managed to get her over to a bench by the road. It had a pretty view of the river and the Massachusetts Street Bridge.

"I'm sorry," she said, sobbing. "I'm sorry."

"We're going to get you some medical help, Miss Campbell," the officer said. "Something that will help you be a little calmer."

"I don't want to go to sleep. When I wake up I'll feel better and then I'll just remember it all over again."

"You don't have to take anything you don't want to. But maybe just have a doctor talk to you?"

She nodded, staring back at the knife. The officer followed her glance, looking at the scene silently for a moment. Other headlights were appearing from both directions.

_Go ahead,_ Mary thought, _ask it_ –

"Is this where your father stabbed himself?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure it's not a few yards away, or off the path?"

"No. This is where."

"Because if he'd stabbed himself and pulled the knife out here, we'd normally expect to find a lot more blood."

"He didn't pull the knife out. I did."

The officer gave a tiny start. She saw it from the corner of her eye. "Why?"

_Because I'm an idiot. Now, how hard am I going to have to work to convince everyone of that?_ "I don't know. I was over by John, and he was just starting to move his head, so I could see he was at least waking up, and Daddy was lying there with that thing in him, and all I could think was how much it must be cutting him up inside." She looked up at him tearfully. "I don't think I hurt him. When I pulled the knife out only a little blood came out of him."

"A little?"

"It ran all over his shirt front and everything, but it didn't – I mean, if he wasn't bleeding that much, I didn't really hurt him, did I?"

"Or his heart had already stopped?"

She folded her arms across her stomach and bent almost double. "Would that – would that – I don't know. I was pressing my hand on the wound and just trying to figure out what to do and then I remembered he said the thing about – being an orphan, and I thought, Mom – "

Other people were approaching, and she could hear faintly the garble of police radios.

After a moment the officer said, "Do you think you can walk?"

"Would you – "

She broke off, not even sure if it was her character's question or her own. Did it matter? The man next to her looked sympathetic and she'd felt like something had been lodged in her throat ever since this had occurred to her.

"It's so selfish," she whispered. "But John is all I have left. Would you marry someone if her father killed her mother and himself? Would, would you have children with someone like that?"

The officer thought for a moment. "Let's not worry about that now. You need to get through this first. And it's going to take some time. Some counseling. I think you need to deal with what's in front of you right now."

She closed her eyes and gave a long shuddering sigh. There was no way he could know that what might be in front of her now was ten years alone, and then death at the hands of a demon.

_S S S S S_

She moved robotically through the rest of the night, repeating the story and waiting and repeating the story, wondering when they'd let her see John. Somewhere along the line her intellect got enough energy to gnaw on the deal she'd made, speculating as though it were someone else's life. The demon had said he wouldn't hurt her, but that was nonsense, of course. Demons lie. What was the point of getting her permission to enter her house if he wasn't going to kill her? But then why wait ten years? He could have easily killed her tonight. Last night. What was the point?

The police urged her to call a friend she could stay with for a few days and she did, but she wouldn't leave until John could go. She knew her leaving when she did had helped to make him a suspect, and she had enough emotion left in her to feel bad about that. When he met her in the middle of the police station she flew to him and he put his arms around her, calming and forgiving, and again she felt that it didn't matter what price she herself paid as long as this good, loving man was alive.

It was mid-morning by the time they were sitting in the Impala outside the tiny but well-kept-up home of Tracy Oliver, Tracy Cummings when Mary had met her in high school. Mary's overnight case was in the back seat.

"What time does your brother get in?"

"He's flying into Kansas City this afternoon."

"Does he need a ride from the airport?"

"No. He's going to rent a car."

"You have the pills the doctor gave you?"

Mary nodded. "But I don't want to sleep."

John needed no explanation. "Yeah. But you have to, sooner or later. Might as well make it as easy on yourself as possible."

She nodded again. "I want to call the funeral home first. Make an appointment for tomorrow. I don't think I could do it today."

"Of course not. If you want me to take you over there, just let me know when and I'll pick you up."

"I don't even know what I'm going to say. I don't know what needs to be done. Outside of cremation."

"Really?"

"Yeah. They were both big believers in cremation."

John obviously thought that was a little odd, but also obviously wasn't going to comment. "Well, they're a big help. The funeral people, I mean. When Mom died, Dad was – he could hardly talk. They took care of everything."

"What will I tell them? What can I tell anyone? Oh, God. Poor Dad."

John obviously didn't understand that either, but of course, he didn't realize that she'd sent her father to the afterlife with a vile slander attached to his name.

"Maybe I should move. Someplace people wouldn't know."

John was silent for a moment. "The thing is, things are going really well at work. I think I'm going to be able to buy the garage from Bill in a few years. Do you think we could stay in Lawrence at least for a while? Then if it's just torture for you, I'll find someplace else."

"Well – actually I was thinking, just I would move." She looked him in the eye. "You're going to be a business owner in town, John. The last thing you need is a wife who – "

After a moment he said, "Do you want to get married? Because it seems like you're always either running away or trying to sacrifice yourself for me."

She could spare him now. All of it. The embarrassment of having a wife that people stared at. Whatever horrific detritus may be left over from her life as a hunter. A demon coming after her in ten years. All she had to say was, "I don't think so."

But did he want to be spared? The thoughts were sliding through her mind faster than she could ever have spoken them. If John knew everything, now, if she told him every last detail and he somehow believed it, would he want her gone?

Love requires a leap of faith. She'd always thought she'd known that before, but she hadn't. Maybe for some people it took the worst thing imaginable to fully understand. She knew that no matter what John might do or what might happen to him down through the years, she'd rather be with him than with anyone else. And now she had to take the leap, to really believe that he felt the same way about her.

"I do," she said softly. "No matter what happens, John. I want to be with you."

He grabbed her and held her tight and she returned the embrace, crying on his shoulder, and they sat like that for a long time. "We'll get through this," he kept saying. "We'll get you through this."

Finally she sat back and wiped her face.

"I'm not saying it'll be easy for you," John said. "Let's just take it a step at a time. If you want to move in a while, we'll think about it then. Or maybe in a few years, we'll just start telling people that your parents died of heart attacks a few weeks apart."

"What difference will that make?"

"As time goes on, a lot. The people who know will understand why we're saying it. But strangers won't know the difference. People move out of town. Your name will change. The story will get put away in the Journal-World's old files. If we're patient, the, the better story will be accepted eventually."

The tiniest tic of a smile twitched her mouth. He'd started to say "the lie will be accepted," and then softened it for her. Not realizing that she'd constructed the lie in the first place, that what he was suggesting was simply a better lie.

The best and easiest kind of lie, of course, was simply not speaking the truth. But even without talking to John, she'd have to start thinking about what to do when the yellow-eyed demon came for her in ten years. Sometime. Not now. Next month. Next year.

John unloaded the overnight case from the car as Tracy came down the driveway to give Mary a huge silent hug. She introduced them, and Tracy took the overnight case and John kissed Mary goodbye.

After all, ten years is a long time. The demon might be exiled back to Hell for good by that time. It might get involved in some other project and lose interest in her – especially if she wasn't a hunter chasing after it. Some hunter might come up with a way of killing demons. Anything could happen.

She was hoping for two different things as she stood on Tracy's porch waving goodbye to John. She wanted the next ten years to pass very slowly. But at the same time, she couldn't wait for them to be over. She wished it were May 3, 1983. If she could make it to that day, Mary thought as she followed Tracy inside, she'd know she was safe.

_S S S S S_

_Author's Note: If you liked this story, please check out my story "Calendar Girl," about how John and Mary met. Thanks for reading! Please review!_


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